Seat Belts

The last of an absorbing trio of small Pacific Standard Time shows charting an especially rambunctious moment at Pomona College between 1969 and 1973 looks at the work of nine artists who were either students or on the school's faculty. Ranging from accomplished to unresolved, the paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations often ricochet off one another in form and content, underscoring an era of ferment. At the Pomona College Museum of Art, senior curator Rebecca McGrew and Getty Research Institute specialist Glenn Phillips have chosen 53 works for Part 3 of "It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles, 1969-1973.

Sometimes you just gotta wonder. Federal regulators have been calling on the auto industry for years to help reduce accidents by installing rearview cameras on vehicles. Yet an official rule requiring such technology on new cars and trucks keeps getting postponed. In January, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told Congress he expected his department to issue the requirement by Feb. 29. Now he says it probably won't come until the end of the year. "Further study and data analysis -- including of a wider range of vehicles and drivers -- is important to ensure the most protective and efficient rule possible," LaHood said.

October 15, 2011 | By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog

Minority children might be at greater risk for car crash-related injuries because fewer wear seat belts, a study finds. The study, presented Saturday at the American Academy of Pediatrics' national conference in Boston, looked at statistics on 37,375 children younger than 16 collected from the National Trauma Database from 2002 to 2006. Among those children, less than half -- 45.7% -- were in restraints. The lowest use of seat belts was found among black, Hispanic and Native American children.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration denied a petition from safety groups, consumer advocates and doctors to require seat belts in school buses, saying the vehicles are "already very safe. " The cost of adding belts — $5,485 to $7,346 per bus — would outweigh expected benefits, the agency said in a notice that will be published Thursday in the Federal Register. Requiring seat belts may force school districts to reduce bus service and lead to more students walking or riding in cars, both of which are more dangerous than riding a bus, the agency said.

Many toddlers -- some as young as a year old -- can unbuckle themselves from car seats, new research finds. But take note, parents: If this happens in your car, don't panic -- that can make matters worse. Researchers from the Department of Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine surveyed 378 parents of children under 6 about whether those kids had ever tried to unbuckle themselves. Of the 621 children younger than 6 assessed in the study, 40% were reported to have unbuckled themselves.

A bus carrying teenagers and their chaperones home from a weekend religious retreat collided with another vehicle on a treacherous mountain road and careened down a steep, snow-covered embankment Monday in an accident that killed one and left at least 10 seriously injured. The bus, belonging to a Korean church in Pasadena, was winding its way down the sharp curves of the two-lane California 189 outside Twin Peaks in the Lake Arrowhead region shortly before noon, fire and police officials said.

Motorists and passengers in California, Oregon and Washington state have the highest seat-belt use in the country, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Oregon ? where nearly 94% of people said they always wore a seat belt ? ranked No. 1, according to a CDC telephone survey. California was close behind in self-reported seat belt use at 93.2%, followed by Washington state at 92%. All three states have strict enforcement of safety belt laws ?

Good news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- seat belt use is up and crash deaths are down, according to information released Tuesday. The percentage of adults who always wear seat belts rose from 80% to 85% between 2002 and 2008, according to the CDC. Officials credit better and stricter laws on seat belt use for part of the rise: In 1982, before the first state law required seat belts to be used, only 11% of people strapped in. But as of 2010, 19 states populated by a quarter of adult Americans did not have a primary seat belt law, and 1 in 7 adults still don't wear their seat belts on every trip.

October 27, 2010 | By Rick Rojas and Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times

The school bus in which 21 people were injured when it flipped on its side after being broadsided by a speeding BMW in Boyle Heights is among hundreds of buses transporting students in the Los Angeles Unified School District that are not equipped with seat belts. The school bus is a reflection of the district's aging fleet, in which two-thirds of the buses still lack restraints, according to district figures. Since July 2005, school buses built to carry more than 16 passengers have been required to have three-point seat belts ?

There's something wrong about a pair of 7-year-olds lounging like sultans in the back of a $60,000 luxury vehicle, downing Go-Gurt from an armrest mini fridge, watching Godzilla on a private screen enhanced with 17-speaker surround sound, and bicker-battling over a remote control that commands a rear-seat massage feature. When I was a kid, cars were cars. They weren't mobile living rooms. But times change. And few things exemplify our changing world more than Hyundai's new Equus, a premium sedan that poses a challenge to the popular conception of Hyundai as a poor man's Honda.